Citrus Season Ends on a Low Note

The 2013-14 Florida citrus season likely finished with the lowest orange crop in 29 years, 104.3 million boxes, and none too soon for many a dispirited grower.

By KEVIN BOUFFARDTHE LEDGER

BONITA SPRINGS | Stick a fork in it!The 2013-14 Florida citrus season likely finished with the lowest orange crop in 29 years, 104.3 million boxes, and none too soon for many a dispirited grower."I hope we don't have a repeat," Marty McKenna, a Lake Wales-based grower and chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission, said at the Florida Citrus Industry Annual Conference in Bonita Springs."It's time to close the chapter on this season," said Mike Sparks, CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual in Lakeland, the state's largest grower organization. "It's disappointing. It's a reflection of (citrus greening), but we'll move on."The 2013-14 orange crop fell 6 million boxes (5 percent) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's May estimate, according to the update released Wednesday. It left the other citrus crops unchanged at 15.6 million boxes of grapefruit, 2.95 million boxes of tangerines and 880,000 boxes of tangelos.Although the USDA releases a final monthly update July 11, none of the numbers likely will change because almost all of the juice processing plants and fresh fruit packinghouses have already closed, signaling the end of the harvest. One of the few still open, Florida's Natural Growers processing plant in Lake Wales, will stop taking fruit deliveries this week, said Bob Behr, the cooperative's chief operating officer.The 2013-14 season started on a relatively high note in November, when USDA projected 125 million boxes of oranges, 17.8 million boxes of grapefruit and 4.75 million boxes of tangerines and tangelos. Many growers expressed optimism that the unprecedented level of pre-harvest fruit drop Florida groves experienced in 2012-13 was a single-season phenomenon.Such optimism proved groundless as the USDA shaved this season's orange crop by 17 percent, grapefruit by 12 percent and tangerines and tangelos by 19 percent. The current crop estimates represent a 22 percent decline from the 2012-13 orange crop, 15 percent fewer grapefruit and an 11 percent fall off for tangerines and tangelos.Fruit size in 2013-14 was also near a record low, which is also attributed to trees weakened by greening. Smaller size means it takes more fruit to fill a box, which also contributes to the smaller crop totals.Greening is a bacterial disease that has infected virtually all of the state's 69 million citrus trees. It appears to hamper the trees' ability to hold onto mature fruit until it can be harvested.Bob Norberg, a leading Florida citrus economist and consultant, gave the Citrus Mutual board a mixed projection on the 2014-15 crop.Norberg's middle-of-the-road forecast assumed an average size and drop for the past three seasons, he said. If that happens, Florida would harvest 118 million boxes of oranges and 16.1 million boxes of grapefruit, he said.If the size and drop problems accelerate, Norberg said, the orange harvest could fall to 94.4 million boxes and grapefruit to 13.2 million boxes. If both areas show improvement, Norberg projected 127.8 million boxes of oranges and 17.1 million boxes of grapefruit would be harvested next season.At those levels, Florida orange growers would make a small to substantial profit on oranges, but grapefruit growers would lose money because farm prices would continue to run below production costs.Whether growers made a profit in 2013-14 will depend upon how much fruit they managed to harvest from their greening-infected groves, said Mark Wheeler, outgoing president of the Citrus Mutual board and a Lake Placid-based grower."It's all production-driven," Wheeler said. "If you got 350 boxes per acre, you probably will make a profit. If you got only 250 to 300 boxes, you're not going to make money."Although farm prices for Florida citrus have gone up as a result of drop problems, grove care-taking costs have also risen substantially because of the extra measures, such as additional fertilizers and more frequent pesticide spraying, necessary to fight greening and keep trees healthy, he said. Average caretaking costs currently run $2,000 per acre, more than double the cost before greening was first discovered in Florida in fall 2005.Even the higher farm prices won't make an unproductive grove profitable, Wheeler said.According to the June 2 Citrus Mutual marketing report, Florida growers earned an average $1.87 per pound solids on early and mid-season oranges picked from October to March and $2.45 for Valencia oranges picked between March and June. The average break-even price for Florida oranges ranges from $1.40 to $1.50 per pound solids.Pound solids is a standard industry measure of how much juice is squeezed from fruit. A gallon of orange juice contains about one pound solid, and a box of oranges yields about six pound solids.Vic Story, a Lake Wales-based grower who owns or manages about 5,000 acres in Polk and neighboring counties, expressed an uncommon note of optimism in contrast to the prevailing skepticism many of his fellow growers are expressing after the second straight season of excessive drop and small fruit."I'm cautiously optimistic about next year," Story said. "There's been a nice uniform fruit set on the trees this year. The growers are committed to riding out this greening problem."The caution stems from the fact the citrus fruit doesn't begin to drop from the trees until it approaches maturity in the fall for early-mids and March for Valencias.

[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980. Read more on Florida citrus on his Facebook page, Florida Citrus Witness, http://bit.ly/baxWuU. ]

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